Motherwell: Saturday is Service Day

manscript extract four:

That September we were due to travel to Falkirk, when we arrived we found the station was only a short walk away from the ground, handy that. The first turnstiles we came to was the Home end, that would do us. We paid in, and waited for the full mob to come in. Couldn’t believe the Coppers were so lax that they didn’t hang about a few minutes after kick-off just in case we came in late, which we did. This wasn’t pre-planned, it just happened that way when we found ourselves unescorted. We made our way hurriedly, up the stairs to a rather full Home end. No-one paid too much attention at our sudden, en masse arrival, only when we made a speedy venture along the terracing to where their main lads would be congregated did anyone pay any attention. We caught them totally off guard and laid into the ones next to the segregation fence. Some of the cloth caps got annoyed at being jostled about as we all tried for a piece of the action but that was about the sum total of Falkirk’s resistance. The Old Bill were quickly on the scene, but even so they never caught any of us fighting. We went in, did the business and made our way back to the end of the covered section within a couple of minutes. Some of us sneaked round behind the goals as the Screws approached, I stood next to an old fella, pretending to watch the game, but he stuck me in when they rounded our mob up and threw us all out. We were in the ground roughly five minutes in total, hadn’t even seen a ball being kicked, although I did see Andy Dornan taking a throw-in before I was pushed down the stairs, but we had done some damage.

Once outside it was made clear to us that we wouldn’t be allowed in any part of the ground, although some were already at the turnstile and evaded capture. Most of us tried a few times without success to get back in, but eventually we gave up and went back to wait on a train. We had a long wait though, next train was after the game finished, but we found some local Skinhead pals to while away the hour or so. They bumped into a few of our lads who had gone for a walk up the town and brought a mob down to the station for revenge. They bricked us as we watched from the shelter, waiting for them to run out of ammo then we charged out at them. One of them stood, he was their leader. He’d come down further than the rest, showing off, but when we came out he was left all alone as his big brave mates turned and fled. He eventually joined them and was pursued through a multi-storey car park, with cries of "SS" ringing in his ears. Didn’t catch the bugger though and he appeared again a short while later, same strategy, throwing missiles then running when we came out. Good exercise I suppose.